Napoleon Against Russia: A Concise History of 1812

By Digby Smith

In June 1812 500,000 men of Napoleon's army invaded Russia. Six months later barely 20,000 returned. The disastrous advance to Moscow and the subsequent retreat irreparably damaged Napoleon's military power and prestige and resulted one of the most celebrated catastrophes of in all military history. Digby Smith's new account of the grim events of 1812 is based on the diaries and letters of soldiers who survived, many of which have not been published in English before. They describe the deadly effect of Napoleon's faulty decisions on the lives of his men, to say nothing of the innumerable Russian military and civilian casualties his campaign caused.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Feb 19, 2005
• ISBN: 9781783409587

Book preview

Preface

There are literally scores of personal accounts of this great historical disaster that have been published to date, many of them translated into English, mostly from French originals. Some of them were written by highly-placed officers and officials of the Grande Armée, who were in close proximity to Napoleon (undoubtedly the single architect of this great tragedy), during the whole adventure. They have left comprehensive accounts of their experiences; sometimes these are extremely controversial, such as that of Count Philippe de Segur. His representation of certain aspects of the Emperor’s character so enraged General Gaspard Gorgaud, one of Napoleon’s most devoted ADCs, that Gorgaud challenged Segur to a duel over them, in which the latter was wounded.

All the English-language accounts that I have read so far concentrate on the fate of the main body of the Grande Armée, under Napoleon’s direct command, as he drove them on and on to certain death, either on the road to Moscow, or in the inevitable, humiliating retreat. It is often a surprise to those new to the study of this campaign to realise that almost all the regiments of this central column had lost fifty percent of their march-in strength of 24 June by mid-August, before any serious actions had been fought. Astounding - but true.

In selecting our ‘war correspondents’ for this work, I have been at pains to:

• Select only the best parts of the most genuinely informative of previously published memoirs.

• Introduce characters new to English-speaking readers.

• Introduce accounts from the flanking formations in Latvia, Polotzk and in Volhynia, all of which have previously been steadfastly ignored.

Research into the Latvian theatre of the war, where Marshal Macdonald’s X Corps operated almost independently against the Baltic port of Riga, has revealed an environment so totally at variance with the grim hell of Napoleon’s central sector, that one could be forgiven for doubting that the two sequences of events took place in the same year or in the same war.

On the southern front the Austrian auxiliary corps of Prince Karl Schwarzenberg, together with the VII (Saxon) Corps, operated around the area of the Pripet Marshes in Volhynia, now the Ukraine. Their incredibly difficult attempts to fight – even to move – in the largest, most dangerous marshes in Europe must excite our admiration for what they achieved.

Schwarzenberg’s somewhat rash, aggressive operations placed his army in awkward predicaments on several occasions; good luck, and clumsy Russian opponents, allowed him to escape just retribution.

Gouvion-Saint-Cyr’s army at Polotzk (II and VI Corps) was largely destroyed by the dumb incompetence of Saint-Cyr and the indifference of the Emperor. Together they presided over its demise in the full knowledge of its causes and its effects.

I have not attempted to give detailed accounts of the various battles and clashes that took place; many other books cover them in great detail. This work concentrates on the individuals and their experiences.

As with so many of my recent works, I am deeply indebted to the generous cooperation of many correspondents of the Napoleon Series and Napoleon Series New Forum on the Internet. Gregory Troubetzkoy and Ronald Pawley kindly allowed me to include quotes from their own books to enrich the narrative.

Prologue

Early in 2002, some drab ex-Red Army barracks in Vilnius, capital of Lithuania, were being demolished, when suddenly the driver of the bulldozer stopped his machine. He had seen something. There, tumbled up out of the soil under the blade, were human skeletons - scores of them. Management was quickly called in. Was this another Katyn Wood from the Second World War? Yet another Nazi massacre of Russian prisoners? Gingerly they began to pick about among the bones. What did they find? Here a button with the number ‘29’ within a ring; then another with ‘61’; then a rhombic metal plate bearing a crowned eagle; a squashed felt and leather shako. The artefacts littered among the bones now began to tell a story. Not of a deliberate massacre, but of a human tragedy of massive scale, which took place 190 years before, in December 1812.

At that time, a starving, terrified horde of sick, injured, disoriented refugees flooded westwards out of Russia, harried by the Cossacks and crushed by the icy winter winds into numbed automata, their only wish - to survive. These few thousands were the unhappy remnants of one megalomaniac’s twisted dream of world domination. They were all that was left of his ‘Grande Armée’.

Wilna, as Vilnius was known in December 1812, was a major depot of food, forage, weapons and equipment for Napoleon’s army. It was also a major hospital. But the then authorities of the city knew nothing of the almost total destruction of that army in the foregoing months: nothing could have prepared them for the climactic events that were to burst upon them in the next few days.

The tide of human misery washed into the city, hoping to find warmth, rest, food and shelter. The astonished commissary officials refused to open the depots to them, unable to believe that these ragged tramps really were the proud regiments that had marched through the city not six months before, on their way to capture Moscow and bring Czar Alexander to heel.

In the resultant chaos of the next two or three days, thousands died of starvation, frostbite, disease, sickness - and a few from enemy action - in Wilna, before the wreckage of that army shuffled on westwards to Kowno and to Prussia. Thousands of the corpses were hurriedly dumped into the River Niemen, through holes hacked in the ice, and borne away. It is likely that most of the bodies in the building site were buried there either in the autumn months of 1812 (the patients of the hospitals who had died) or in the spring of 1813, when the clean-up operation took care of the corpses exposed by the melting snow.

A museum has now been opened in Vilnius to house the artefacts found in the trench. They bear witness to all the nationalities that went to make up the invading army: Frenchmen, Germans, Swiss, Italians, Portuguese, Croats and Illyrians, Poles and Lithuanians.

What a monument to the incredible human folly of one man.

Digby Smith

Thetford, 2004.

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Napoleon I, Emperor of the French. Author’s collection.

Chapter 1

The invasion of Russia is decided upon

‘The colonial produce placed on the market in Leipzig fair

was conveyed in 700 carts from Russia; which means that today

the whole trade in colonial produce goes through Russia, and that

the 1,200 merchantmen were masked by the Swedish, Portuguese,

Spanish, and American flags, and that were escorted by twenty English

men-of-war, have in part discharged their cargoes in Russia.’

Napoleon, 4 November 1810.

‘In affairs of state one must never retreat, never retrace one’s

steps, never admit an error - that brings disrepute. When one

makes a mistake, one must stick to it – that makes it right!’

Napoleon to Segur in Moscow, October 1812.

It is generally agreed that Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812 was his greatest mistake. To be sure, he made others; the kidnapping and execution of the Duc d’Enghien, his invasion of Spain and his subsequent failure to resolve the mess he left behind there before embarking on the Russian adventure, and - undoubtedly - trying to compete in a trade war with Great Britain.

While the results of the Russian failure were speedily and dramatically evident, the effects of the trade war, carried out equally relentlessly between Britain and France, were much less easily seen but equally - if not more - fatal to his empire. Indeed, it was the continued smuggling of British contraband through Russia into western Europe that was the real reason for Napoleon’s decision to invade the Russian colossus. It can be argued that he would eventually have been forced out of power by the universal public resentment of his Continental System, which deprived the masses of all the spices, condiments, tea, coffee, cocoa and other colonial products to which they had become accustomed.

With the British government’s Order in Council of May 1806, all Continental ports from Brest to the River Elbe were placed under blockade by the Royal Navy. This was known as Fox’s Blockade, he being the Foreign Secretary of the day after the death of William Pitt. This sealed off the great Hanseatic ports of Bremen and Hamburg. Napoleon responded with his Berlin Decree of 21 November 1806, which was a much more rigorous policy than France had previously employed. The British retaliated with new Orders in Council in November 1807, banning neutrals from trading with France and its allies. Spencer Perceval, the then prime minister, summed up the aim of these new Orders in Council: ‘either the neutral countries will have no trade, or they must be content to accept it through us.’

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Alexander I, Czar of all the Russias. Author’s collection.

Napoleon then resorted to the first Milan Decree of 23 November 1807. He had declared ‘une croisade contre le sucre et le café, contre les percales et les mousselines’ (a crusade against sugar and coffee, against percales - calico - and muslin). Interestingly enough, this was to give a great spur to the development of the European sugar beet industry.

To his brother Louis, king of Holland, Napoleon wrote that his aim was to ‘conquérir la mer par la puissance de la terre’ (conquer the sea with the power of the land). Britain was placed under blockade; all trade with Britain was to cease; British goods on the Continent were subject to seizure and no ship - of any nation - could enter any French or allied port if it had previously visited a British port.

This policy was doomed to failure, since any power that aims at world domination - and Napoleon certainly did - must be able to control the world’s seas. Britain did so, and was thus the superpower of this age. Soviet Russia’s great naval building programme following the Second World War, when she also strained to attain global domination, is further proof of this truth. Nowadays, air power goes hand in hand with sea power to ensure world dominance.

The effects of the trade war on the economy of Holland were disastrous: 1,349 merchantmen entered Amsterdam’s port in 1806, but this had dropped to 310 in 1809.

The Moniteur of 25 September 1806 gave another reason for the promulgation of Napoleon’s Continental System: ‘La prohibition des marchandises étrangères de côtes que vient d’ordonner le Gouvernement ne contribuera pas peu à nous faire obtenir le resultat si désirable de fabriquer nous-mêmes la totalité d’articles dont nous avons besoin.’ (The prohibition on the entry of goods of foreign origin, ordered by the government, is designed to favour the sales of all articles made in our own territories).

To replace the trade between mainland Europe and the industrialized production and colonial items, now firmly a British monopoly, Napoleon attempted to create and impose his own ‘common market’ on all the nations under his control. Naturally, this market was skewed in favour of France, in the same way that Britain biased trade with her colonies in her own favour. The ban on trade with Britain lasted until early 1810, when the Emperor was forced to allow trade with his great rival under licences; Britain rapidly became one of the most significant markets for French goods. But if the French economy had suffered under Britain’s blockade, the economies of the other European states were in tatters by this time and the irrepressible smuggling was forcing Napoleon to annex more and more stretches of Europe’s coastline in a frantic, but fruitless, effort to stop it. Holland, north Germany, the Hanseatic ports, the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg - the list grew ever longer, France ever larger.

The economy of Russia, too, was suffering under the Continental System, which Alexander had agreed to impose upon his country in 1807. By 1810 the very internal stability of Russia was in danger and the merchants and nobles were in growing unrest. The Czar relented. To have done otherwise would have been too dangerous for him personally.

British merchantmen poured into St Petersburg; colonial produce flooded through Russia and across Europe. Napoleon’s spies reported everything. He realised that if he did nothing to stop this impudent flouting of his orders he would become an impotent laughing stock, and he was notoriously short of a sense of humour. He tried diplomatic threats; these were fended off, ignored. He pondered. Since meeting with the Czar at Tilsit three years before, he had been convinced that he could manipulate his Russian cousin like putty. Now this.

What was he to do? Admit that Britain had won? Never! He well knew that such an admission would rapidly be followed by the end of his reign. But there were many who were capable of reading between the lines of the Emperor’s much-cherished economic lies, among them the Duke of Wellington. In October 1811 he wrote to Lord Liverpool (then Secretary of State for War):

I have no doubt but that Napoleon is much distressed for money. Notwithstanding the swindling mode in which his armies are paid, the troops are generally ten and eleven, and some of them twelve months in arrears of pay... It is impossible that this fraudulent tyranny can last. If Great Britain continues stout, we must see the destruction of it.

And again, on 24 December 1811, to Lord William Bentinck, commanding British forces in Sicily:

I have long considered it probable, that even we should witness a general resistance throughout Europe to the fraudulent and disgusting tyranny of Buonaparte,¹ created by the example of what has been done in Spain and Portugal; and that we should be actors and advisers in these scenes; and I have reflected frequently upon the measures which should be pursued to give a chance of success... I am quite certain that the finances of Great Britain are more than a match for Buonaparte, and that we shall have the means of aiding any country that may be disposed to resist his tyranny.

This was pure prophecy. Denis Davidov (a young Russian officer of spirit and initiative) had heard of the guerrilla warfare that the Spanish people had unleashed on the hated invaders and was keen to try it in Russia. We shall see how successful he was.

For Napoleon, to just let things continue, to try to ignore the creeping destruction of his artificial economic structure, was not an option either. Action was imperative; but Russia? How could he force his will on that giant? Diplomacy had failed; economic counter-measures would be just laughable; French exports to Russia were miniscule. There remained only one possibility - war. But this would have to be conducted on a truly mammoth scale and in a theatre up to 2,000 km away from Napoleon’s French base.

He was not worried about fighting the Russian army; he had beaten them in 1805, 1806 and 1807. He overawed all their commanders and his Grande Armée was the perfect war machine. The Confederation of the Rhine, Italy, Naples - even Prussia - would provide more or less willing contingents and other assets to support him. His new father-in-law, Kaiser Franz I of Austria, would also be persuaded to lend a sizeable contingent. Napoleon would break into Russia like a tempest, destroy their army and enforce his will in Moscow and St Petersburg. Then? Who knew? Perhaps on to India? Perhaps to eclipse Alexander the Great?

So how did the opponents in this epic struggle measure up to one another in 1812? Russia had a population of some 37.5 million, an army of 516,770 at the end of 1811 and a navy of 67 ships of the line, 36 frigates, over 700 sloops, designed for shallows use, and 21,000 men in the crews. The army was increased by a further 113,275 men in new regiments; a further 185,000 were raised in Reserve Divisions, formed by the combined Reserve and Depot battalions. There were then 63,279 men in garrison regiments and some 100,000 irregular troops. An astounding total of 1,300,000 Russians were eventually mobilised for the defence of their homeland. These were subdivided as follows:

1st Army of the West under Barclay de Tolly - 110,000 men, plus 7,000 Cossacks and 558 guns.

2nd Army of the West under Prince Bagration - 45,000 men (including the newly-formed 27th Division) and 217 guns.

3rd Army of the West under General Tormassow - 46,000 men and 164 guns.

The Army of the Danube under Admiral Tschitschagoff – 38,600 men and 204 guns.

Up in Finland and Latvia were a further 26,000 men and 78 guns. In the early part of 1812 the populace was called upon to join the militia or Opolcheni; this resulted in a further 330,000 men joining up, although many were armed only with axes and pikes.

France’s population was 30 million, considerably less than that of Russia, but her army was the greatest in Europe until Russia mobilised in 1812. Estimates of the march-in strength of Napoleon’s multinational army vary; Chambry gives the following totals: 610,000 men, 182,000 horses and 1,372 guns. Doctor David Chandler gives ‘more than 600,000 men... 200,000 animals - horses and oxen - of whom 80,000 were the finest cavalry mounts.’

When Napoleon invaded Russia, there were 4,000 men in his headquarters alone. The Imperial Guard numbered 47,000, the twelve infantry corps had 415,000 men, the four cavalry corps 40,000 and the artillery and train numbered 21,500. A further 80,000 men followed on in the ‘march regiments’. These totals included all the foreign contingents from Prussia, the Confederation of the Rhine, Italy, Naples, Spain, Portugal, Austria and Illyria. The stunning sum of 607,500 men is reached. In June 1812, however, only just over 500,000 invaded Russia, the rest (IX and XI Corps and the march regiments) were on the lines of communication.

The French navy had been second only to Britain’s Royal Navy in 1790. The excesses of the Terror had caused over half the officers to emigrate. Various defeats had steadily reduced it; Trafalgar gutted it. In disgust at its repeated failures, Napoleon had turned his face from what was left. The remaining ships rotted in their blockaded harbours, their crews used for coastguard duties. In 1813 naval gunners formed four regiments of infantry, which fought very well at Leipzig and other battles.

Notes

1

The Duke loved to refer to the Emperor by his discarded birth name instead of the adopted ‘Bonaparte’.

Chapter 2

The preparations

‘I have decided on a great expedition. I shall need horses and

transport on a large scale. The men I shall get easily enough; but

the difficulty is to prepare transport facilities. I shall need an

immense amount of transport because I shall be starting from

the [River] Niemen [Russia’s border with the Grand Duchy

of Warsaw] and I intend to operate over large distances and in

different directions ... do not let the question of expense check you.’

The Emperor to Lacuée Cessac, head of the imperial

ordnance department in June 1811.

Napoleon said to a representative from Marshal Marmont from Spain in 1811:

Marmont complains that he is short of many resources - food, money, means etc. Well, here I am, about to plunge with an immense army into the heart of a great country which produces absolutely nothing!

Then he fell silent for some minutes, before asking the nonplussed colonel: ‘How will it all end?’

Segur tells us of the contents of some of the Emperor’s orders: in one missive he wrote ‘For masses like these, if precautions be not taken, the grain of no country can suffice.’ In another:

...it will be requisite for all the provision wagons to be loaded with flour, bread, rice, pulse and brandy, besides what is necessary for the hospital service. There will be nothing for them to expect from the country and it will be necessary to have everything within ourselves.

Again, all that he wrote was true.

The entire French empire and her satellites were cranked into action for the invasion; Europe buzzed with activity from one end to the other. As Bernays tells us in his account of the fate of the Frankfurt contingent:

...other convoys carried tools of all sorts and apart from furniture, namely ovens, also building materials, prefabricated sections of wooden houses with windows, collapsible windmills - in addition there were whole battalions of artisans, not only bakers, butchers, tailors, cobblers, but also masons, carpenters, gardeners... also numerous fire engines, as if one had foreseen the burning of Moscow.

Also trekking eastwards from France were ‘disproportionally large numbers of beardless novices, the bad horses of the national French cavalry and the wagonloads of young lads clapped into irons for desertion.’

In December 1810 some 80,000 young Frenchmen were called up for military service; one year later Napoleon withdrew all the cavalry and artillery of the Imperial Guard that were in Spain. In January 1812 he further pulled out the two Young Guard divisions and all the units of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. Thus 27,000 veteran soldiers were withdrawn from Spain, which still left an amazing 232,500 French and allied troops in that country, struggling to hold their own and getting nowhere.

In the spring of 1812 the Grande Armée began to form up within the borders of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. The government there was, of course, called upon by Napoleon to provide massive amounts of food and fodder and the troops were billeted upon the townspeople.

The Regiment Frankfurt, later to form part of the 34th Division, XI Corps, was in Hamburg in April 1812. Bernays gives us this example of the degree of smuggling that then existed:

Every day the regiment marched out of the city, to drill on the Heiligengeistfelde, which lay outside the customs zone. Before they returned to the city, Danish merchants¹ would fill the barrels of their muskets with coffee beans, cinnamon and the like. When this ruse was finally discovered, the soldiers resorted to hiding the goods in clay busts of the emperor. The Continental System was so detested, that no-one thought to report them.

For the supply of some of the troops marching eastwards that spring on what for most of them would be a one-way trip, great magazines had been established with supplies and equipment gathered in from all over the empire. Segur tells us of the great magazines which were formed in major strategic cities such as Danzig, Koenigsberg and Thorn. Supplies from here were sent by boat up the Baltic coast, then into the Pregel river to Vehlau and Insterburg, then by land again to Labiau on the River Niemen. From here the supplies were to be shipped eastwards along that river and the Vilia to Kowno and Vilna. Unfortunately, due to the drought of early 1812, the Vilia was no longer navigable. Another problem was that the wagons used by the French in the invasion of 1812 were far heavier than the local Lithuanian and Russian carts - this was to be a major factor in the disaster which was to come so very soon.

On the diplomatic front, Napoleon gave orders that the Ottoman empire should be encouraged to step up the war with Russia on their common borders. Unfortunately for him, Alexander’s diplomats were more effective and concluded the Peace of Bucharest on 28 May 1812 with Turkey, thus freeing up Admiral Paul Vasilievich Tschitschagoff’s 25,000 strong Army of the Moldau, which was sent north to attack the French later in the year.

Napoleon’s proclamation to the German contingents went as follows:

Soldiers, Russia has broken her oath. An inescapable fate drags her along. Let the will of fate be done. Forward then over the Niemen. The second Polish war will be as glorious for our arms as the first, and the following peace will put an end to Russia’s meddling in European affairs.

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Early in the campaign; foraging in the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. Albrecht Adam.

After reading this out to the Westphalians on 26 June, General Vandamme added his own little codicil:

Napoleon crossed the Niemen on the 24th of this month and has pushed the Russians back. We will now advance and conquer; in two to three months this will all be over.

He who lacks the heart and courage to fight with us can hang up his sword in his billet before evening and fly to where he will!

Czar Alexander also issued a proclamation to his people:

The enemy, with unequalled perfidy, threatens the destruction of our country. Our brave soldiers want to throw themselves on his battalions and destroy them; but we will not sacrifice them on the altar of this Moloch. There must be a general uprising against this universal tyrant... He has come with treachery in his heart and loyalty on his lips to enslave us with the help of his legions of slaves. Let us drive this plague of locusts out! Let us carry the Cross in our hearts and steel in our hands! Let us pluck the fangs out of this lion’s mouth, and overthrow the tyrant who would destroy the world!

At a dinner in Danzig, prior to crossing the Niemen, Berthier, Murat and Rapp were with him. The Emperor suddenly asked Rapp: ‘How far is it from Danzig to Cadiz?’ ‘Too far, Sire!’ Rapp replied. The Emperor retorted:

I can see, gentlemen, that you no longer have any taste for fighting. The King of Naples would rather be back in his pretty kingdom; Berthier would like to be playing the sportsman in Grosbois; Rapp would fain be enjoying the sweets of Parisian life!

There was silence - Napoleon had put his finger on the spot; war weariness was infecting even his most senior commanders. He was a giant alone among mere mortals. Or a megalomaniac detached from reality?

Napoleon’s plan for 1812 was to leap across the Russian border and fall upon the two enemy armies, before they could unite, and to defeat them in detail. It was the same plan that had worked so well in 1805, 1806 and 1809; success against the bumbling Russians seemed a foregone conclusion. Peace would then be dictated, the Continental System re-imposed and Britain strangled. But success depended upon the Russian armies obliging by staying put, divided and up against their western border.

There certainly was confusion and a lack of unity in the Czar’s high command at this point. General of Infantry Prince Michael Andreas Barclay de Tolly, commanding the 1st Army of the West (100,000 men), wanted to adopt a strategy of falling back before the superior invaders, buying time with space, until campaign attrition reduced the Grande Armée to a suitable size for a successful battle to be fought. The commander of the smaller 2nd Army of the West (30,000 men), General of Infantry Prince Piotr Ivanovich Bagration, an aggressive and very competent general, hated Barclay and wished to dispute every inch of Mother Russia’s holy soil. The Czar was bombarded by plans from his numerous advisers, many of them foreigners and unpopular with the native Russian officers. Luckily for him, Barclay won the day. The rest is history.

The supplies in the magazines, created by Napoleon’s orders, were only available for the Imperial Guard and other guard troops during the invasion. All other formations were told to collect rations and forage from the countryside. The population of the Grand Duchy was about 3,600,000, and the state had been sucked dry financially since its creation in 1807. The harvest of 1811 had been far below average, and the extra supplies demanded by Napoleon for his ‘Golden Horde’ of over half a million extra mouths were just not to be had. So the unfortunate line troops, barred from the magazines, were faced with the stark choice: take what was needed by force - for the peasantry would not willingly surrender their few supplies, cows, sheep and poultry - or starve.

Bavarian cavalry with the IV Corps cross the Niemen watched by Prince Eugene.

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The resultant chaos was indescribable. Farms, villages and towns were repeatedly looted, houses were torn down to provide building materials for bivouacs and fuel for the fires. Anything that would burn went into the fires. The foraging parties from the leading regiments in the immense column of invaders returned loaded to excess with everything that they could find; perishables that were not rapidly consumed rotted and were thrown away. The following regiments found nothing near the line of march and were forced to send foragers ever further away to find enough to survive. The unfortunate inhabitants of the Grand Duchy were transformed into starving vagrants.

Apologists for Napoleon have accused only the foreigners of having looted; this was far from the truth. The German contingents were used to being supplied with rations and forage from magazines; they were now forced, at his explicit orders, to steal to survive. And they were still in ‘friendly’ territory. The cavalry were reduced to feeding their starving horses on green grain crops or even thatching straw; colic swept through the horse lines. And this was before the invasion had even begun.

The Westphalian, Giesse, tells us that:

On 13 April King Jerome held a review of his troops in Kalisck; he was more concerned with their smart appearance than with their welfare... Morale was already very low and suicides were not unknown.

In the Saxon Palace in Warsaw, in mid-May, Jerome held daily reviews and inspections of his army in the gardens of his palace. He concentrated on the rapid formation of battalion squares as a defence against the notorious Cossacks.

Jerome’s odd attitude to military priorities will surface again.

The Württemberg Cavalry General Wilhelm von Woellwarth was caught up in this